Archive for November, 2007
by Jevon MacDonald
November 29, 2007 at 8:33 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
In 1534 a group of men, some disillusioned soldiers, some students, all a mishmash of Spaniards, Portuguese and French gathered outside paris to form an order. The Company of Jesus was a commitment to each-other and to their cause.
to “enter upon hospital and missionary work in Jerusalem, or to go without questioning wherever the pope might direct”
You don’t have to be Christian, Catholic or even religious to have some respect for that kind of commitment. A vow of poverty and a future of unknowns. These men were a special type of person, who would stay committed to their cause through untold hardship. Upon forming, the Jesuit Priests split up and set out to complete the tasks given to each member by the pope. There are two parts of the story about this order that are relevant to the introduction of social computing in to an organization today. The first is the story of the constitution of the order.
The founder of the order, Ignatius of Loyola, was tasked with creating a constitution and set of rules for the brotherhood. I am sure that having to live within the Catholic Church, easily the largest enterprise of the day, did not make this easy. His approach, and one we should replicate, was methodical and took place over a period of six years. Ignatius of Loyola did not draw up arbitrary rules as I can only imagine would have been common in the church, instead he introduced rules or customs and tested them out, getting rid of ones that didn’t work and keeping the ones which helped move the order forward. Instead of pretending he had the answers, which as leader would have been typical, he chose to do what was sensible.
The second lesson, or perhaps warning, is how hard the work of the Jesuit Priest was at this time. The thankless journey in to unknown populations to spread a gospel that most people didn’t understand or particularly want. This is the role of the Enterprise 2.0 Evangelist in a large organization today. Behind you, you have the enterprise, playing the role of the church, and in front you have a hostile population.What can the Priests and Priestesses of Enterprise 2.0 do to be successful? How can a mid-level employee bring social computing in to their organization? Is it hopeless? Are the Jesuit Priests of Enterprise 2.0 bound to a life of pain and rejection?
Take a page from the Jesuits. You have to go in to unknown cultures, unknown places with unknown risks and you have to put it all on the line. You must live the faith in the most stubborn way possible and only then will your message be seen and heard. Above all else, the Jesuits aimed to live their faith and be examples rather than simply act as preachers. The impact of this was profound.
Few societies have entrenched themselves so successfully across the globe as the Jesuits, they have been resilient to change and catastrophe over the years and they have, arguably, been successful in achieving many of their original goals. Leave your views of religious orders at the door, I know I had to, and take a look at the story of a small group of revolutionaries who created one of the most distributed, organic and innovative organizations that the world has ever seen.
by Rob Paterson
November 29, 2007 at 7:44 am · Filed under
2.0 Design Thinking, Business Model, Culture, Economics, Enterprise 2.0, Facebook, Messy World, Nato, Public Media, Secretary Gates, Social Computing, Social Media, Taliban, Terror, User Revolution, War, Web 2.0, Wisdom of Crowds, videos
Secretary Gates made this statement in a recent speech:
It is just plain embarrassing that al-Qaeda is better at communicating its message on the internet than America. As one foreign diplomat asked a couple of years ago, “How has one man in a cave managed to out-communicate the world’s greatest communication society?” Speed, agility, and cultural relevance are not terms that come readily to mind when discussing U.S. strategic communications (My post at Fast Forward yesterday)
I am starting to see something here. War has been the agency that accelerates the development of key new technology.
In the 1860’s the civil war put the train on the map. Post the war, an enormous track laying boom exploded around the world. The military made the train the backbone of the industrial approach to war.The same with flight. In Europe, the military saw the potential of flight immediately. But the US did not - that is why Rickenbaker flew a Spad.
The Wright Company in particular and American airplane companies in general continue to lose their technological edge to the Europeans. This is due in part to the U.S. Government’s failure to support the fledgling airplane industry. While the governments of England, France, and Germany are buying hundreds of airplanes for their armed forces and supporting aviation research, the United States is spending roughly the same amount of money as Bulgaria. (First to Fly)
By 1918, the future of flight was assured. There were no doubters - and like the adoption of the train, this new way of connecting people has transformed our world.
So back to social software. As impressive as Facebook is, as impressive the growth of blogging - this is all personal. Organizational life and how we all live has not been changed yet. There is immense resistance in the key institutions of our time to its introduction. Leaders in business, education, healthcare etc all fear the outcome of adoption.
The big money is all based in an advertising model. If you can form a large group, you get rewarded. But the true potential of the tool set is not being invested in.
The true potential of social software is that it allows many to many to meet in real time at low to no cost. This means that you can see what is really going on - the business intelligence aspects are immense and transform research as it is conducted today. It enables you to get your message out in a real time and precise way - will transform marketing. Most of all it enables people to have very different relationships. Large, central capital based organizations are no longer needed. So everything that we do now such as how we educate, provide healthcare, provide services will be radically transformed.
Our large institutions can no longer do anything properly. The military is no exception. It is too big, too slow, too ponderous, too expensive. It cannot deal with war as it is waged today. The military are themselves full of resistance to the kind of change that social software implies.
BUT, people in the military who are losing the war of public opinion - who know now that Human Terrain is the new battlefield - are weighing the idea of loss of control with losing the war. My bet is that they will seek to win the war. This is what Gates is starting to say.
The greatest irony is that their enemy is showing them how to do this. Here is a CNN report on why NATO is now getting behind a Social Software approach to war. (Posted yesterday- sorry about the repeat but this makes sense)
CNN interviews a NATO Official in Afghanistan who echoes the Secretary and insists that we better get good at this or risk losing the real war - which is all political.
The strategy aims to counter years of propaganda video posted on the Internet showing Taliban attacks on NATO forces which fighters use to claim that NATO’s position in the Afghan war is deteriorating.
“The Taliban, who are literally cave-dwellers, are doing better than we are on a key battleground — and that’s video,” said NATO spokesman James Appathurai. “They deploy with videographers. We don’t. They have DVDs out in an hour, we don’t.”
Wielding video cameras like weapons, fighters quickly upload images of their attacks and create a valuable morale booster for their supporters.
Now, after much internal debate, NATO has begun declassifying and posting top secret combat video on YouTube and other Web platforms to try and beat the Taliban at its own game.
“We’re, in a sense, winning the tactical battles, but we’re not focusing enough on the strategic battle, which is public opinion,” said Appathurai.
The link to the excellent report and video is here.
In 1918, America could see for itself the power of flight. The nation adopted it like no other.
So here is my prediction. The first institution that will really invest in developing Social Software to radically improve how it delivers will be parts of the military. As with the train in the civil war and WWI, as with flight in WWI and WWII, how we deploy, how we fight and what victory is will be redefined.
The greatest irony will be is that the lesson for this change will have been taught by Al Qaeda.
This will not be an all or nothing adoption. Even in the 1920. and 1930’s Billy Mitchell fought an uphill battle with his superiors about the value of aviation. But the wedge was in.
The first flight was in 1903. By 1945, aviation was the new dominant military power. By 1975 aviation had captured the civilian world.
I think that history will look back at Facebook and smile.
Well done Mark - but look at what this technology really did!
by Rob Paterson
November 28, 2007 at 4:43 pm · Filed under
Al Qaeda, CNN, Conflict, Enterprise 2.0, Nato, Secretary Gates, Taliban, War
Secretary Gates made this statement in a recent speech:
It is just plain embarrassing that al-Qaeda is better at communicating its message on the internet than America. As one foreign diplomat asked a couple of years ago, “How has one man in a cave managed to out-communicate the world’s greatest communication society?” Speed, agility, and cultural relevance are not terms that come readily to mind when discussing U.S. strategic communications.
Only days later, CNN interviews a NATO Official in Afghanistan who echoes the Secretary and insists that we better get good at this or risk losing the real war - which is all political.
The strategy aims to counter years of propaganda video posted on the Internet showing Taliban attacks on NATO forces which fighters use to claim that NATO’s position in the Afghan war is deteriorating.
“The Taliban, who are literally cave-dwellers, are doing better than we are on a key battleground — and that’s video,” said NATO spokesman James Appathurai. “They deploy with videographers. We don’t. They have DVDs out in an hour, we don’t.”
Wielding video cameras like weapons, fighters quickly upload images of their attacks and create a valuable morale booster for their supporters.
Now, after much internal debate, NATO has begun declassifying and posting top secret combat video on YouTube and other Web platforms to try and beat the Taliban at its own game.
“We’re, in a sense, winning the tactical battles, but we’re not focusing enough on the strategic battle, which is public opinion,” said Appathurai.
The link to the excellent report and video is here.
NATO made several video excerpts available to CNN. One excerpt shows an armed Taliban fighter disguised as a woman in a full burqa, taking refuge with women and children to avoid being targeted by NATO.
One disturbing NATO video begins with a birds-eye view of a home in southern Afghanistan where NATO said a high-level Taliban meeting was taking place. Before NATO helicopters took aim at the house, a small boy is posted at the door as a human shield, forcing the NATO chopper pilot to hold fire.
Information is a crucial tool in any war, but is especially important in Afghanistan where the Taliban’s deeds, words and images have portrayed a deteriorating security landscape, with NATO soldiers on the run.
NATO officials argue that this is far from the truth and the country has experienced significant development and growth with constant attention being paid to security problems.
Appathurai said there are hundreds of military combat videos that show the true extent of Taliban engagement and the brutality of their tactics.
He admitted that in the past he had a hard time convincing NATO allies to declassify this sensitive, secret video for wide release. He said on occasion, that will now change.
NATO said the Taliban videos slowly erode the world’s perception of how the Afghanistan mission is progressing. But the Taliban’s media savvy means much more, said one expert.
Videos such as those produced by the Taliban are the lifeblood of terrorist recruiting campaigns, said Glen Jenvey, a UK-based Internet specialist who tracks trends in extremist and jihad content on the Web.
“At one point somebody has actually brainwashed these people to become terrorists, and this is where the recruiting sergeants actually take hold and the online part is an important part of it,” Jenvey said.
This reminds of the the history of the airplane. The first flight was only a few years before WWI. War propelled the technology. With no war, imagine all the people who would have dismissed it. I am getting a feeling that war will propell social media the same way. Real needs to know and to understand and to inform will drive the resources. Business will I think follow.
by Bill Ives
November 28, 2007 at 8:42 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
A few weeks ago I wrote a post, It is Time for Facebook Fridays: A Idea that Should Spread, that briefly mentioned Serena Software’s policy of allowing employees one hour of personal time during the workweek to spend on their Facebook profiles and connect with co-workers, customers, family and friends. Last week I spoke with René Bonvanie, the SVP of worldwide marketing, partner programs and online services at Serana, to learn more about the program and I discovered there is much more to learn.
In my first post I referred to an article on their policy which I felt was somewhat mis-titled, Serena Software Adopts Facebook as Corporate Intranet, and said that they are not really going that far. Well, I was wrong. Serena is really replacing its existing intranet with Facebook as a front end linked to a low-cost content management system behind the firewall. Here are the reasons why and what they have seen so far. When I heard the story, it makes sense to me, and falls under the categories of “why not?” and walking the web 2.0 talk.
René explained that the firm is just over 800 employees but is still globally based (operations in 18 countries) with 35% of their employees working virtually. They are going through a major transition as they move from more traditional enterprise applications to web 2.0 mashups. The leadership wanted all employees to be better connected so they could be on the same level of understanding, excitement, and commitment to this transition. They also thought that using a web 2.0 tool, like Facebook, represented the best way to take the whole company into this new space.
Like many companies their existing intranet was a poor platform for document finding, much less sharing. As an aside when I speak on web 2.0, I often ask anyone in the audience who can more easily find stuff on their company intranet than the web to raise their hand. This is a question I learned form Andrew McAfee. He reported that no one has raised their hand to this question and I have found the same results. I have also seen many unsuccessful intranets that cost large sums so I could certainly understand what René was talking about. One of major flaws of existing intranets, even when they work to find stuff, is the lack of social context. It is difficult to find anything about people.
Serena wanted to promote a greater connection between people. Facebook, which is both free and a great example of web 2.0, seemed to be the right answer. They established a private Facebook group for Serena employees and they built a few simple custom Facebook apps to better enable intranet functions. Now they provide links through Facebook to documents stored securely behind the firewall. Access is just as secure as any other method. Serena employees go to specific people to get relevant information. For example, René and his staff provide press clippings and the HR people provide links to benefits information. In each case you learn about the people providing the information through their Facebook profiles, and not simply the content, itself.
Serena also has public Facebook groups to connect with customers and the broader marketplace. René said that some of his customer conversations have now moved away from email. Clients such as Stewart Cohen at Arbitron and Rajiv Amar at Intuit connect with René and his colleagues through Facebook. René is also one of my Facebook friends and I have noticed that he is usually at the top of the recently updated profile list so I can easily see what he is currently doing.
Serena has found that Facebook has also helped them with recruiting. People send their resumes through Facebook and prospective employees relate their use of the same networking tool that they use in their personal lives. Employee morale has also increased, as well as employee retention, as the whole firm is better connected. A few years ago, many people thought that blogs and business did not go together. We have seen that perception change dramatically. I wonder if the same will be soon said for Facebook and other social networking tools. Thanks to Serena for proving us with an example.
by Joe McKendrick
November 27, 2007 at 12:46 pm · Filed under
2.0 Design Thinking, Community, Enterprise 2.0, Social Computing, Social Media, SocialText, User Revolution, Web 2.0
“In order to get maximum value from this ever-growing collection of ideas and information, in a real sense you have to un-manage it. It’s by un-managing it, by allowing everybody who touches it to add to the connections, to add their own links, ideas, reviews, bad ideas, good ideas, insights—that’s how the collection grows. Just as with the Web itself, it cannot scale sufficiently if it’s too centrally managed.”
-David Weinberger
David Weinberger, who I had the pleasure of meeting at FastForward’s San Diego confab earlier this year, and who’s work has graced these pages (Hylton provides a list here), recently discussed his latest book, Everything is Miscellaneous, with the editors at KnowledgeWorld.
David says we are entering a Miscellaneous Economy, enabled via technology, which is providing us with rich two-way knowledge and interaction. As he put it: “with the digital miscellaneous, we find all sorts of ways that the things are alike, all sorts of connections and relationships. We’re doing that together. We’re doing it over the course of time. The digital miscellaneous pile is getting richer and richer with connections, meanings, significant relationships.”
David says that the Miscellaneous Economy is evolving out of the Web of relationships that is developing as a result of social networking technology. “It can be as ordinary as a link,” he explained. “A person links one page to another because she sees some relationship between them. Tags are another expression of a relationship. The semantic Web does this also. All of these relationships are preserved and are available to help us find what we want. The miscellaneous becomes rich with potential, with multiple layers of meaning and a near infinite number of ways of organizing it.”
What’s the meaning to business? David provides three ways in which businesses can profit from the Miscellaneous Economy:
1) Businesses can let customers organize information: “Under the traditional way of organizing, which works very well for physical objects, the business decides what is the best way to organize and categorize its stuff, and what are the right paths through it. …What you think of as a survival backpack may be to a customer a good graduation gift or the perfect shape to carry her new video camera. For another customer, it may be reminiscent of the backpack he had when he was in the Boy Scouts. You enable your customers to find the information that they want far more efficiently if you allow them to participate in the categorizing and organizing of it. And especially if you allow them to do it together.”
2) Businesses can uncover previously unseen relationships: “By using tools that allow that information to be broken out of its assigned categories, you will discover relationships you didn’t know were there. You’re going to spur innovation, you’re going to discover efficiencies and you’re going to enable people across your organization to find other people who share their passions.”
3) Information mashups: “You’ll also get more use out of your information because your information makes more sense when it’s mashed up with other information. Not infrequently it happens that by allowing information over here that looks like it shouldn’t have anything to do with that other information over there, we discover what we never expected to discover.”
by Bill Ives
November 26, 2007 at 3:02 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
Here is another approach to optimizing enterprise 2.0 connections and collaboration. There is always an element of social networking in social bookmarking, but Connectbeam makes this link explicit. They also provide a unique delivery vehicle as the service comes through a hardware application that stays behind the ftrewall. I recently discussed Connectbeam with its CEO, Puneet Gupta. He said, “Our fundamental belief is that social networking when it comes to businesses and enterprise, has to be front-ended with information access and discovery.” Thus the networking begins around sharing information and social bookmarking comes into play. In addition to individual sharing, Connectbeam allows for group sharing through communities.
Connectbeam also wanted to take a novel approach to implementation to be more competitive with the large players entering this space. With a rapidly changing technology, the company did not want clients to have to deal with implementation concerns and face any issues with upgrades. They literally adopted a plug and play to get things not only inside the firewall but also inside the box, the one they provide. It also enables one click back up and restores, one click upgrades, and automatic authentication. Puneet said that a number of the very large enterprises that have adopted such as Honeywell, Intel, Nokia, CSC, and several of the big phrama have appreciated the security that the box offers.
One of the clients, Rich Hoeg at Honeywell, has written a bit on his Connectbeam experience on his blog, econtent. In his post, Tagging Inside the Firewall, Rich wrote, “the service and server are running inside our network domain, yet our employees will be able to tag both internal and external content…ConnectBeam works in tandem with our internal Google search appliance.” Puneet believes that social networking and bookmarking have the potential to catch on quickly in the enterprise because they can easily intersect with existing work flow. Unlike Blogs and wikis, these applications can sit on top of applications that are already used within normal workflow like search. So they do not replace existing tools, they just sit on top.
Puneet did a search for me using the Google Search Appliance and Connectbeam provided additional ranking based on number of times tagged. It also offered related tags, related users, and related communities. You are able to see who else did the same search, what they found, what they thought about it, and are provided with the ability to contact this person with a similar interest. This seems a nice extension, taking Google search even more into enterprise 2.0.
by Rob Paterson
November 26, 2007 at 7:18 am · Filed under
ABC News, Enterprise 2.0, Facebook, New Realities, Public Media, Relationships, Social Media, barriers
ABC News are getting deeply involved with Facebook - their intent is to have a more interactive relationship with the “audience” and to allow their audience to have a relationship with each other. (NYT)
ABC News and Facebook have formally established a partnership — the site’s first with a news organization — that allows Facebook members to electronically follow ABC reporters, view reports and video and participate in polls and debates, all within a new “U.S. Politics” category.
To underscore their collaboration, the two organizations will announce today that they are jointly sponsoring Democratic and Republican presidential debates in New Hampshire on Jan. 5, three days before the primary election there.
“Through this partnership, we want to extend the dialogue both before and after the debate,” said Dan Rose, Facebook’s vice president for business development.
The announcements are another sign that news organizations are looking to capitalize on the potential power of Facebook, which began as a database of college friendships, and other social networking sites. Media companies like The New York Times and The Washington Post have produced pages for use on Facebook and some newspapers, magazines and television stations have recently invited users to join special pages that are set up to follow reporters’ political coverage. But ABC’s new relationship is intended to be deeper.
“There are debates going on at all times within Facebook,” David Westin, the president of ABC News and a new Facebook member, said. “This allows us to participate in those debates, both by providing information and by learning from the users.”
The collaboration between ABC News and Facebook started quietly several weeks ago, with personal pages of network reporters like Rick Klein, the author of ABC’s widely read political newsletter The Note, and Sunlen Miller, who has been covering Barack Obama.
Encouraging users to interact with reporters is a significant step for a news organization like ABC News. Until recently, a viewer wanting to respond to Mr. Klein’s daily essay could only write a comment or send an e-mail message to a generic address. Now, they can send private messages directly to reporters or can post them on the reporters’ public Facebook pages. For now, while the number of comments remains relatively small, reporters engage in dialogues with viewers.
Mr. Westin and Mr. Rose said that no money changed hands in the deal. For ABC News, the collaboration puts political content on a site with 56 million active users. For Facebook, it adds an authoritative source and fresh content for the site’s political section.
Around 250 users have signed up to follow Ms. Miller, an off-air reporter, making her the most popular to date. Ms. Miller believes her popularity is tied to the strong backing for Mr. Obama among Facebook users, with 164,000 declared supporters, more than twice as many as any other candidate.
“If you’re ABC News, your content can spread virally through all these friend networks,” said Steve Outing, an interactive media columnist for Editor & Publisher magazine.
For example, Eloise Harper, another off-air reporter, used a digital camera to record a 50-second clip of flags falling down behind Hillary Rodham Clinton at a campaign appearance in Iowa. The clip has been viewed over 350,000 times on ABCNews.com and Facebook.
Yes the walls between us and reporters are coming down as are the walls between us as we seek to talk about things that are important. I wonder what all of this will be like in 2 years time?
by Jim McGee
November 21, 2007 at 10:49 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
The conversation about technology and organizations has been enriched with a new blog, Difference Engine, by my long-time friend and colleague, Abbie Lundberg. Of course, as Editor in Chief at CIO Magazine, we’ve been benefiting from her perspective and insight for years. Now, we’ll get it a bit less filtered and a bit more personal. I’m looking forward to it. Here’s a quick sample:
As the debate over the CIO role rages on, we wonder which is the most critical skill set: business, technology or, as some argue, the ability to detect bullshit?
The debate about the best background for CIOs isn’t new. It’s been going on since the mid ‘90s, when Johnson & Johnson first appointed a CIO from “the business,” without hands-on IT experience. The argument goes something like this: Technology is becoming an increasingly integral part of business; ergo, CIOs have to be business strategists. So far so good. But then some people continue the argument to say that because business knowledge and ability is so important, technology knowledge isn’t. False!
…
So what do you think? Can you be a truly great CIO without a pretty deep understanding of technology? Does the merging of business and technology make technology knowledge more or less valuable to the individual leading strategic IT?
The Most Critical Attribute of a CIO | Advice and Opinion.
by Bill Ives
November 21, 2007 at 9:07 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
Sameer Patel made a useful comment on a prior post, Is IT looking over its shoulder at Web 2.0?, that I want to bring to the attention of those who do not surf the archives. He said, “With Web 2.0, there is a big opportunity to treat IT department as consumers first and buyers second. E 2.0 tools often are enterprise renditions of consumer applications that have shown value and IT folks are often the early adopter community that have contributed to the success of these consumer tools…. A simple place to start is to remember that folks in the IT department as users of similar consumer focused Web 2.0 tools and equate that to an enterprise use case to show business value.” For some reason I had not thought of this angle as I kept thinking about the business people using the consumer web 2.0 tools and bringing them to the attention of IT. But, of course, as Sameer wrote, the IT folks are people also and they are actually more likely to be early adopters of consumer web 2.0 tools and many of them are tools people. Thanks for this. Has anyone experience this situation in enterprise 2.0 adoptions?
by Rob Paterson
November 19, 2007 at 5:14 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0, John Wallace, NBC, Social Media, TV
I was sent this email from a client. It comes from John Wallace, NBC executive VP, television operations and production services (TOPS), the head of what was NBC TV - It’s our new reality - No matter how faulty the steps and the tools - one way broadcast TV is DEAD.
I’m extremely pleased to announce an exciting next step in our evolution as local content providers …we’re changing our name. As of today, our group will be known as the NBC Local Media Division. This is a much better reflection of who we are as an organization and a greater indication of the full scope of our capabilities.
Our stations already produce local content for a multitude of media platforms beyond our primary television channels. These include our diverse broadband offerings, like digphilly.com and yourLA.com; our multicast digital products; our growing presence in mobile distribution and multiple media platforms outside of the home. Our old name - the NBC Television Stations Division - just doesn’t do all of this justice.
Our stations are the core of what we do. They provide a platform in terms of our credibility, our service and our community connection. Re-branding our group is not about moving away from the traditional broadcast medium, but more about putting an equal value on all of the other mediums with which we are involved.
Our new name also sends an important message to the marketplace. Our clients are asking for integrated marketing solutions that incorporate television, broadband and other emerging platforms. That’s exactly what NBC Local Media offers. We can grow our clients’ businesses by delivering the power of GE and NBCU combined with local content, customized messaging and marketing solutions that engage consumers where they live, work and play.
This is an extremely exciting time to be a part of the NBC Local Media Division. Whether you’re an employee, a consumer of any of our products on any of our growing platforms, or an advertiser looking to reach your customers in new and different ways, NBC Local Media is the place to be.
As part of our focus on local media expansion, I’d also like to highlight two key leadership roles that we’re announcing today. Brian Buchwald has been named Senior Vice President, Local Digital Media and Multiplatform, and Mark French, Senior Vice President and General Manager of NBC Everywhere, a new unit focusing on our growing digital place-based network, available on numerous out of home media platforms. They will work closely with our stations to ensure the division’s continued expansion beyond the limits of the traditional television space.
In his new role, Brian will be responsible for developing new business models and enterprises with a focus on local video content that extend NBCU’s knowledge of local media to a broader geographic footprint. He will also explore alternative content production models, as well as new formats and channels for content distribution.
As General Manager of NBC Everywhere, Mark will focus on expanding our presence on alternative distribution platforms through content and advertising partnerships with a focus on our local markets. He will also work closely with NBCU’s sales and marketing groups to integrate place-based opportunities into their 360-degree offerings and with the NBC Agency and the local stations to program the various out of home channels.
by Bill Ives
November 19, 2007 at 2:05 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
Lauren Cooney at IBM provided some useful notes from the Mashup Camp in a comment to my post, Is IT looking over its shoulder at Web 2.0? These ideas have been presented before on this blog, (e.g., the post she commented on but also elsewhere by others) but it is nice to see another confirmation. Go to her post, How Web 2.0 is shifting the programming model, for more details. Here are the highlights.
With Web 2.0, the programming model is shifting towards the assembly of applications more than the development of applications and a shift in the role of development from the actual app developers to IT department developers and possibly to business analysts.
There has to be a cultural shift within the IT mindset to turn IT from an inhibitor to an enabler for how information is managed within the enterprise. IT departments also need to get educated on risk management.
Lauren concludes with this prediction:
“Right now I think that the dial is starting to turn here, but this process isn’t going to happen overnight. With mashup and Web 2.0 vendors like Google, IBM, Microsoft, and others out there, I am guessing that it’s going to be a “tipping point” sort of movement. The grassroots movement with users and information consumers has already started… and I think that we’re going to soon see a top down change with executives buying into this model and these changes as they start to see potential benefits.”
I agree with Lauren on large enterprises. With small enterprises that are just adding infrastructure, it might be hard for them to assemble a best of breed collection of enterprise 2.0 tools. I think there is a great market for low cost, and some times free, enterprise 2.0 tools in small businesses but the need for basic infrastructure may be a priority for their smaller IT budgets, and, more often, attention spans. Perhaps the software firms that recognize this and provide a platform or the ability to integrate with a common platform may come out ahead. For example, I have seen some small firm tools integrate with IBM Websphere Portal and Sharepoint (e.g. Sharepoint Adds Some Purer Play Partners). This is not to say that a pure play provider cannot survive on its own but the firm should have a strategy to compete with, or link up with, integrated tool sets or perhaps provide their own platform.
by Jevon MacDonald
November 19, 2007 at 10:16 am · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
Analyst Gartner predicts vendors will find themselves increasingly challenged as IT departments look to reduce software costs as they have done with hardware and services.
In a research note Gartner VP William Snyder said: “Up until now the unique nature of the software market has meant that buyers had very little negotiating power after the initial purchase of a software licence. We expect those dynamics to change considerably over the next five to 10 years giving CIOs and software procurement officers more bargaining power while potentially reducing software vendor profit margins.”
The trend we have all been talking about for the last 5 years (at least) has finally made it in to a Gartner research note. Where Gartner nails it is in identifying the major trends that are pushing prices down:
- Business process outsourcing
- software as a service (SaaS)
- low-cost development offshoring
- modular architectures and service-oriented architectures
- the emergence of third-party software maintenance and support
- growing interest in open source
- the rise of Chinese software companies
There are more than enough bloggers and analysts who are watching these trends more closely than I. The key for anyone who is involved in software purchasing is to know that this trend is accelerating, and that you can absolutely negotiate on software pricing. People like Vinnie Mirchandani are who you need to have on your side of the table.
by Bill Ives
November 15, 2007 at 3:52 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
I recently talked again with Tim Low, VP of Marketing at Daptiv, the firm formerly known as eProject. I wrote about the firm on this blog under its old name and Tim provided some very useful enterprise 2.0 success stories, see Enterprise 2.0 Examples of Managing Projects in the Tools and Food Industries.
The firm began in the late 90s as an online project management suite as part of the Web 1.0 wave. They survived the dotcom bust and have grown significantly recently as they have transitioned to web 2.0. Daptiv has taken on 200 new customers in the first three quarters of 2007 including, Chanel, ATA (the airline), Harry & David, Frontier Airways, and Bass Pro Shops. It is now moving beyond managing projects to broader enterprise collaboration around business processes and has rebranded itself to be better positioned for broader product coverage.
We discussed two topics, the rebranding process and the new Fall Edition of their flagship product. Having been through a number of rebranding efforts, I was interested in their experience. Tim said they wanted to speak to a broader audience beyond the project management people. They looked at brand names on a continuum from those that have a specific description such as their old name, eProject, or Microsoft and a completely fanciful name like Google.
They wanted to be closer to the fanciful end but with a touch of description. They wanted a name and logo that did not indicate old school but captured more of a new web feel. They started with 4,000 names, narrowed it to 40 and then to three finalists. Then they did due diligence on these three. They worked with a consultant and invited employee input. The final choice, Daptiv, has the “i” in a different color in the logo and I think it accomplishes their objectives. In addition to providing product flexibility, this type of name also helps with the search engines.
The Fall Edition of their current main product, Daptiv PPM, has some new features to expand its use as a collaborative work tool (PPM stands for portfolio project management). It is designed to help manage work and not simply projects. They were finding that clients were using their tool for more than project management, in part, because of its enterprise 2.0 qualities, and they wanted to make it easier to do this. They also found that some of the best use cases came from organizations that do not consider themselves project driven.
To better support the work process, Daptiv added a new layer of capabilities they refer to as “work intelligence” that facilitates reporting, analysis and dashboarding of work process in an accessible format. Daptiv brought in some of the functionality of Cognos to speed up the availability of these capabilities. They made the creation of custom versions of these capabilities within the reach of the business user without the need of IT support. They also allow for the integration of data from these work intelligence apps with their traditional project management apps.
Daptiv has found that one of the results of these new dashboards is the elevation of transparency further up the management levels within an organization. In one of their clients, the real estate and facilities management group uses a Daptiv work intelligence app to visualize their property acquisition and management process. They can easily see the status of acquisitions, the ratio of leased vs, owned, and spend per year in multiple categories.
Daptiv’s product direction is consistent with the trend of focused tools expanding their reach within enterprise 2.0 as both users and product developers discover new uses for the transparency and other features of these tools. I think this speaks to the power and flexibility of enterprise 2.0.
by Rob Paterson
November 14, 2007 at 6:21 am · Filed under
Blogging, Conferences, Enterprise 2.0, Social Media, Stuart Henshall
How often is there a conference that you want to attend but can’t? Wouldn’t it be great if the organizer set up the conference so that it could be blogged. People are blogging them anyway - usually under challenging conditions.
What would be an ideal approach?
Stuart Henshall has given this a lot of thought
“I’ve been meaning to write a post about conferences, conference organizers and how they prepare for a social media world. I attended two conferences in the last week KMWorld and FutureVision. Both were inadequately prepared for social media. I use them only as an example, both were excellent events in their way and yet they were missed opportunities. Still rather than address the organizers I thought I’d address the presenters. There are lessons listed for Organizers and PR firms too.
Presenters generally came unprepared for a social media world. Unless we are talking an O’Reilly conference, Supernova, Barcamp or a Blogging convention you as a presenter may not have been confronted with the “problem” … or is that “opportunity” before. Each time I’ve gone to a non-tech / non geeky conference in the last few years outside of communications I’ve felt lost and unsupported. I’ve also learned “bloggers” just aren’t understood. So take a moment and just consider, if you are a presenter and your presentation is being live blogged… What do you do?
His answer to this question is here.
by Bill Ives
November 13, 2007 at 3:09 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
Here is an article that starts with the line, “Forget outsourcing. the real threat to IT pros could be Web 2.0.” It goes on next to quote Ken Harris, CIO at nutritional products manufacturer Shaklee. “We’ve cut IT staff by 20%, and we’re providing a whole lot more in terms of IT services.” They achieved the benefits initially through mashups and them went on to others aspects of web 2.0.
Perhaps the IT pros looking over their should just turn around, embrace the change, and take a leadership role. This is the example set by IBM for themselves as described in the article with a title that speaks a lot for the message, Changing the corporate IT development model: Tapping the power of grassroots computing. I wrote a bit on their efforts on this blog in IBM’s use of Mashups: aka Situational Applications. It sets a good example for others.
by Rob Paterson
November 12, 2007 at 4:05 pm · Filed under
BBC, BBC Manchester, COSI, Enterprise 2.0, Flickr, Hyper Local News, Jeff Jarvis, NPR, Ning, PBS, Public Media, Robin Hammam, Social Computing, Social Media, Social Objects, Twitter, WOSU
This Wednesday, Nov 15th, the guys at WOSU will meet with may of the leading local bloggers in Columbus to see if they can find things to talk about and to do with each other. Here is the invitation:
We at WOSU and COSI have been wondering how we could do more to help our community cope with some challenging issues. We asked ourselves:
What if we — your local public broadcaster and science museum — and those of you who are the local blogging experts got together and learned how to use Social Media to bring back that great American tradition of the community taking charge of its own problems?
Here’s what we’re wondering:
Could we use social media and our many talents and resources to breakthrough the bureaucratic barriers that seem to block so much local reform?
Could we gain enough support and understanding to shift our education system so that our children are equipped to face the sometime harsh realities of the world?
Could we start to make sense of what our aging population, our health care system and even our food system may mean to us?
What other issues should we be discussing with an eye toward change?
Many local bloggers have deep subject knowledge and are also part of existing communities that also care and know a lot.
We have a big megaphone—radio and web site—and some great resources—a centrally located facility with cutting-edge technology (studios and a mediaLab) that we could add to the mix.
Can you imagine what we might be able to do together?
Interested? We would like to invite you to the first meeting of the Columbus Social Media Cafe — a “Town Hall” Open Space Meeting — on Thursday, November 15 at 6:30 pm, to see if we can find an agenda that we can all get excited about and to see what will emerge if we get together.
The meeting is at WOSU@COSI inside COSI at 333 West Broad Street in downtown Columbus.
Tim Eby, retiring Chair of NPR, will be blogging here - see the picture above - and he will be Twittering here. Scott will be vidoing some of the participants and WOSU will put the clips up on their site soon.
There will be pictures here on Flickr
This is a look at part of the amazing space at COSI.
The hope is that this may be the beginning of a new approach to Hyper Local Coverage - where the bloggers and the public TV/Radio - can combine their talents and efforts.
Many thanks to Robin Hammam at the BBC and to Jeff Jarvis for inspiring this efort.
by Jerry Bowles
November 12, 2007 at 9:32 am · Filed under
Community, Enterprise 2.0
Is conversational marketing for real or is it an oxymoron? Can large corporations really use social media to build influence and valuable relationships in targeted markets? I believe they can and have been involved over the past several in an effort to test that belief, which is the reason I haven’t blogging much lately.
About six months ago, my business partner Robin Carey and I approached Don Bulmer, head of Industry Influencer Relations at SAP, the major enterprise software firm, with an idea: Let us help you increase your visibility and influence in the small business market by sponsoring an online business community that we are building around the needs and interests of business owners and managers of companies with fewer than 500 employees, and the professionals and experts who advise them.
Our logic was that while SAP offers a full-range of software for the small and midsize company market and has thousands of customers in those categories, it is still perceived by many as a maker of software “for the big guys.” We believed we could help alter that perception by applying some of the lessons of social media and conversational marketing we had learned over the past year or so from developing two prototype communities–Social Media Today and CleantechCollective.
To our delight, Don agreed and SocialMediaTodayLLC had its first paying customer. MyVenturepad is the fruit of that engagement.
We’re “soft” launching today which is another way of saying we’re not quite sure yet whether the wheels are on right or that we’ve remembered to fill the tires. In the software business, this kind of launch is called a “Beta” and what it means is that we want your help and feedback in making this a community that you’ll want to belong to and participate in on a daily basis.
You can do this by signing up for membership (upper right hand corner). Once you get your confirmation e-mail you can click on the link and it will bring you back to this page, already logged in. Click on “My Profile” (upper left) and fill out the information that you want to share and upload a photo of yourself which will appear on your comments and posts. Most of the community features are explained in the How to Use MyVenturepad section.
We’ve assembled a great network of featured bloggers for MVP, including people like Dick Costolo, co-founder and CEO of Feedburner; Verne Harnish, founder of the Young Entrepreneurs’ Organization and the Association of Collegiate Entrepreneurs; Jeff Cornwall, Director of the Belmont University Center for Entrepreneurship; Barry J. Moltz, a member of the Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame, and a growing list of other experts.
We invite you to add your own voice, by commenting on posts, creating your own profile and personal network of connections or even starting your own blog here or adding your existing blog to the MVP content feed.
The site is owned by SocialMediaTodayLLC and we are soley responsible for any shortcomings or screwups that are certain to occur. Our relationship with SAP, and other future possible sponsors, is third-party.
About the name? MyVenturepad is a madeup name based on a combination of the rather obvious “venture” and the less intuitive “pad,” which has multiple meanings–the place where you hang out, a notebook, and–most optimistically for you and for us–a place from which big things are launched.
To help get us started, here’s a special inducement for new members to join MyVenturepad. We’ve ordered a bunch of copies of Seth Godin’s new book Meatball Sundae, which is coming out on December 20. We’ll give a free copy to the first 200 of you who sign up who own, manage or advise a company with fewer than 500 employees, AND fill out your profile page (including your mailing address so we’ll know where to send your book). You’ll also need to check the box that gives us permission to send you stuff at the end of the registration form.
by Bill Ives
November 8, 2007 at 7:48 pm · Filed under
Enterprise 2.0
I wrote about Letting Facebook and MySpace into the Enterprise? a while back and just got a comment with a great link I want to share to those who are not scanning the archives. Derek Abdinor sent me a link to an article somewhat mis-titled, Serena Software Adopts Facebook as Corporate Intranet. They are not really going that far, but Serena has adopted “Facebook Fridays.”
As the article reports, “each Friday, employees are granted one hour of personal time to spend on their Facebook profiles and connect with co-workers, customers, family and friends. This initiative will start today and will be rolled out in 18 countries where the company has offices.”
This is much better than “casual Fridays” and actually involves a commitment by the organization. It is one that should pay dividends. I remember one client, which shall remain nameless, that actually “rewarded” employees by letting them wear casual clothes on a Friday if the firm reached a major business milestone. Some of the employees thought they were just being cheap.
Kudos to Serena. I hope they get some good press for this. I have written about Serena on this blog. They provide tools for enterprise mashups. Given their market space and the likely age and views of their employees, they should recognize the value of Facebook. It also makes more sense to recognize and channel social working. I do wonder how it works. Does each Serena employee have 800 friends, their fellow Serena employees?
